Vijay Mallya arrested In London by Scotland Yard

Business tycoon Vijay Mallya, who fled India in 2016 and has been accused of defaulting on loans worth crores, has been arrested in London. India had asked the UK to extradite Mr Mallya on charges of money laundering in India.

Watch: Vijay Mallya’s Wealth Across the World

Art of Leaving from the King of Good Times ‘Vijay Mallya’

We all know Vijay Mallya as a flamboyant business who is always surrounded by beautiful women. However, the king of good times Vijay Mallya seems to have fallen on bad times lately. Recently, a business deal was announced where Mallya was supposed to get millions of dollars and was contemplating moving to the UK. Now it seems, Vijay Mallya has already moved to the UK with substantial amount of money, while a consortium of banks went to court asking the court to restrain Mallya from leaving India.

As per a newsreport, Vijay Mallya flew out in Jet Airways’ Delhi-London flight on a first class ticket, was accompanied by a woman and had seven huge bags, which didn’t seem like a business trip.

The whole country is calling him an ‘Absconder’ now, but Vijay Mallya doesn’t think so. Here are some of his tweets.

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I am an international businessman. I travel to and from India frequently. I did not flee from India and neither am I an absconder. Rubbish.

So what exactly does he do for a living, and why is he in the news lately?

Vijay Mallya is not only a businessman but also a politician (he is a member of the Rajya Sabha, the upper house of the Parliament of India). He was the ex chairman of United Spirits Ltd., the largest spirits company in India and Chairman of UB Group, an Indian conglomerate with interests in beverage alcohol, aviation infrastructure, real estate and fertilizer among others. However, recently, he sold of his business to Diageo in a multi-million dollar deal after which he has been accused of fleeing the country (with millions of dollars) while he owes crores of rupees to several banks in India.

It seems Mallya owed the banks more than Rs 9,000 crore but the assets pledged as collateral for the loans were merely 10% of the amounts advanced to him. “However, his sprawling assets abroad together are much more than Rs 9,000 crore due to the banks”. The loans given to Kingfisher were on the basis of brand value, which was very high at the time of advancement of loans.

In the movie ‘I’, directed by Shankar, the character of one of the villains was inspired by Vijay Mallya.

Filmmaker Madhur Bhandarkar is a regular at the parties hosted by Vijay Mallya, and his film ‘Calendar Girls’ was inspired by the life of Vijay Mallya. Suhel Seth had played the role of Vijay Mallya in the movie.

Watch: Calendar Girls Trailer

Watch: Making of the Kingfisher Calendar Girl 2015

Attorney general Mukul Rohatgi who moved to court on behalf of the banks said, “Most of the aircraft used by Kingfisher Airlines were on wet lease and the banks could not take control of them for recovery of loan as these belonged to other countries. The brand name has crashed. We need to sit with him across the table and get back the money that belongs to the public. Let him be forced to come back.”

What do you think? Is Vijay Mallya really trying to escape criminal proceedings, or id he leave because he wanted a break to relax?